Sgt Pepper & Across the Universe

The Beatles, as we all well know, were actively putting out albums from 1963 to 1970 and broke up that year.  Each of the Beatles pursued a solo career, and Paul McCartney was most active in touring.  John Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman in December 1980 in New York City, while George Harrison died of natural causes in 2001.   McCartney and Ringo Starr remain active.

To say their music touched our lives would be an understatement.  I’m sure even Mick and Keith would have to admit that – as loathe as they may be to admit so publicly.  I sense that Keith takes a perverse delight in pushing buttons and pissing people off, deliberately fashioning himself as the John Lennon of the Rolling Stones.  Mick is more diplomatic and polite, eager to please, and thus fashioning himself as the Paul McCartney of his band.   By keeping his mouth shut and simply playing the drums, Charlie does his Ringo role well enough.

Economists and those who understand and care about economics often talk about “externalities”, both positive and negative.  These are effects a transaction has on non-participants.  The classic negative externality is pollution.  But music has the wonderful positive externality of itself.  None of us worked for Parlophone or Apple Records, or for the Beatles, but most of us with (AHEM) taste in music enjoy the Beatles’ music whether we simply purchased LPs, CDs, MP3s, or even just heard others playing the music.   We’d hope the effect was positive.

One major NEGATIVE effect was when one track on the self-titled, so-called “White Album”, “Helter Skelter”, persuaded Charles Manson to persuade a gang of hot but stupid teenage girls from California to kill random strangers in L.A. in August 1969.  I’ve already addressed this in a prior blog and don’t want to discuss it again.

A more ambiguous effect was produced by two movies inspired by the Beatles’ music:  “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (named after the album, of course) from the 1970s, and “Across the Universe” which came out in 2007.   It’s these that I’ll be discussing today.   [This will be on the exam.]

 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.  By now this 1978 film is much-ridiculed.  I recall its release back at the time but did not see it, as I was a kid and hadn’t yet joined the Beatles cult.  None of the Beatles were involved, but a whole host of popular bands from the late 70s were.  The core “band” were the Bee Gees joined by Peter Frampton to make 4.   The majority of the music in the film comes from the album of the same name (minus “Within Without You” or “Lovely Rita”) plus the later album Abbey Road.  There’s some stupid plot about Mean Mr. Mustard stealing relevant items and it’s up to the boys to un-f**k everything to the tune of Beatles songs to fix it.  Alice Cooper is here, as are Aerosmith, doing a half-assed copy of “Come Together” which they are too proud of.   The music is lip-synced which is odd because it’s all redone anyway.  Likewise, Steve Martin gets props for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” which he didn’t do particularly well either.  

Essentially they honor the Beatles by making a stupid movie with a stupid plot, someone’s idea of making money off the Beatles by doing something which really doesn’t do much more than remind us that the Beatles were excellent and too many other bands which came after were not.   Having said that, it’s not so bad that no one should ever watch it.  Do your brain and its limited memory capacity a favor and rent the movie from Netflix (as I did), watch it once, then forget it.  Aerosmith continue covering “Come Together”, while the Bee Gees saw fit to forget to reissue this when redoing their back catalog.  I’m sure they’re prouder of “Saturday Night Fever” and for good reason.   

“Across the Universe”.   The 2007 release occurred after I’d drank the Beatles Kool-Aid so I saw it in the movie theater when it came and out and ignored it until seeing it on DVD again last night.   Evan Rachel Wood, who we can recognize as Dolores in the new Westworld series from HBO, is one of the major characters here, Lucy.   The movie starts from the early 60s and winds its way through the decade, plunging through different situations with different Beatles songs performed by the cast members to accentuate plot points.  Jim Sturgess plays a Paul McCartney-type character, Joe Anderson plays Max, not sure if he’s supposed to be John Lennon or Kurt Cobain, who he much more closely resembles. 

I’m guessing the people who did this probably watched “Sgt Pepper” and tried to avoid the same issues, with mixed success.  You really have a continuous narrative set out in Beatles songs loosely chronological according to release, the songs actually sung by the actors (?) or far better lip-synced than in “Sgt. Pepper”.   Bono and Eddie Izzard are here as well.  Somewhat pretentious but not too silly or stupid.   While it seems to take itself seriously I didn’t find it nearly as stupid as “Sgt. Pepper”.  However, I don’t think it’s worth buying and still merits Netflix rental followed by oblivion. 

Now the question is: is there a shitty band (no, the Beatles don’t count as such) which inspired an excellent film?  Get working, people.